Animation Retargeting Setup - One Rig to Rule them All?

I have multiple humanoid character models, some are taller than the others while others are shorter/stocky than the others. I know that animation retargeting allows you to use same animation files exported from maya/3ds max and use them on any rig, right? So if I make an individual rig for each of my characters (Do I have to? Can they be shared?). I only have to create the animations once for any one of my characters then just use animation retargeting for the other 2+ characters.